Modern-day Gladiators...or not?

Ta-Nehisi *considers Eric Winston's (on-point, I think) reproach of Kansas City fans, some of whom cheered starting quarterback Matt Cassel's head injury:

The dance between football's culture of inflicting pain vs. causing injury is fascinating. The ritual is usually to cheer for big hits, and then stand in shock and silence when--as tends to happen--a player is left sprawling for long minutes on the field. I'm not sure this is a football thing, or even something relegated to violent sports....

Here's the injury. It's hard to tell from the clip how much or what fans were cheering because you don't know what the stadium sounded like before or after.

As an aside, it strikes me that the hit doesn't even look that bad, which maybe points to how much punishment these guys endure. They are so fast, so big, and so strong. And head injuries are weird and unpredictable.

You can check out Winston's words yourself:

I appreciated Winston's rant (still do) and hadn't really considered the disconnect Ta-Nehisi takes "slight" issue with. This kind of parsing of good violence and bad violence, of the language play inherent in such a violent and popular sport, seemed a good follow-up to yesterday's Saints thing.

But before I go, who can consider the language of football without thinking of Carlin's Baseball/Football rant, which Scott introduced me to and we both used in our composition classes (because I stole his excellent lesson plan, obviously).

I don't think you'd have to look far for an NFL Films clip that refers to players as MODERN-DAY GLADIATORS. Maybe the more we learn about player health, the more that description becomes too close for comfort.


*As usual, thoughtful comments follow Ta-Nehisi's post and are always worth a read if you have the time. Warning: they're also good if you don't have the time.